Sorry if this is a little too trivial for these forums. I learned a new word and unlearned it a day later. Hopefully you can help me remember it. (i.e. you remember it and just tell me. -_-)
The word is used to describe someone who is obsessed with and romanticizes the past. They talk about how it was less violent, there was less crime and believe other various myths about how idyllic it was. The person I saw who was called this word talked about the 50s like it was a moral utopia.
It isn’t “nostalgic”, it’s something a little more obscure and specific to my description. If anyone knows/would like a guess to jog my stupid word forgetting memory I’d appreciate it.
“Whig history” is the idea that history is a march of progress, social and scientific, its literal opposite would be Tory history…small ‘c’ conservatism maybe? Traditionalism? To Greeks it would be the ‘Golden Age’, or arcadian (that is, thinking of the past as an Arcadia).
As you say, “atavistic” doesn’t really mean what you initially described.
The first thing that occurred to me on reading your OP was “antiquarian.” I’m not sure if it always had the connotation of romanticizing the past, but it does seem to carry the meaning of being rather geekily obsessed with past eras, particularly with historical relics and documents.
I stupidly believed the definition that the person told me when they used “atavistic” to describe someone obsessed with the past (40s/50s in that case). Damn, it seemed like such a nice sounding word too and they were so confident in how they used it. At least I know to look up 100% of things I’m told from now on.
Yeah, you’ve helped a lot. I have a few things to read now after looking up stuff in your posts. This is an interesting topic to me, I loved The Better Angels of Our Nature. It boggles my mind why people think the past was so much better than the present. (The reason I thought of this was because someone was saying that people in the 50s had an easier time financially than we do now in another conversation.)
Was there anything about the past that was better than now? All I can think of is the music and a lot of fashion from the 40s and 60s.
Retrophile? Retrophiliac? Historyphile? Historicophile? Anachrophile? Archaeophile? Some of these words appear to exist, others are just wild extrapolations.
Probably not the word you are looking for, but how about Rockwellian?
I know Norman Rockwell was actually a more critical observer of his times than often supposed, but this term does appear in a couple of dictionaries an an adjective for idyllic portrayals of mid-century middle America.
“atavism” and similar derived words may not mean what OP thought, but it’s still a good word to know and remember. If you know some people you really dislike (jerkish ex-boyfriend, bureaucrats, politicians of your non-preferred political persuasion, etc.) it can come in very handy. To call someone “atavistic” is, colloquially at least, to call them a Neanderthal or a caveman.
Give it a try! Let MrAtoz, of Post #4 above, run you through his atavachron and you can experience for yourself being atavistic!
